Movies: Ready Player One; The Social Network

Warner Bros. has acquired film rights to Ready Player One, Ernie Cline's debut sci-fi novel. Variety reported the studio had "attached Donald De Line to produce with Cline's manager Dan Farah. Sale of the property to Warner closed late Friday after it topped bids from Paramount, a day after Random House won the book publishing rights for North America."

Cline will adapt the book, "in which a teen protagonist escapes his bleak life in an idyllic virtual world called Oasis. He then finds himself competing in a treasure hunt against ruthless foes after the game's founder dies and offers his fortune as the grand prize." Variety noted that the project has been described as Avatar meets The Matrix meets Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

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News flash from an unlikely source: Facebook has 500 million users, maybe. Although the company itself hasn't announced its arrival at this magic number, TechCrunch did a bit of Holmesian deduction based on the recent release of a movie poster for director David Fincher's The Social Network, which was adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin from Ben Mezrich's book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal.

TechCrunch said that the "poster, which features a close-up of actor Jesse Eisenberg (who is playing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg), features the tagline 'You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.' Intriguing--but is it accurate? The latest numbers on Facebook's press site say the network has 'more than 400 million active users'--this echoes what Zuckerberg said in a post in February. In late May, that number was pegged at 450 million, but third-party statistics suggest it was already closer to 500 million."